I nearly drowned on holiday when i was 8 (20 years ago) years in Sumatra.

My mum was quite adventurous and liked going on holiday alone, when i was born that meant taking me along as well. We went all around Indonesia, my favourite spot as a child was Bali thanks to the monkey forest, i also got bitten twice there by two seperate monkeys and got chased several times by screaming apes, another couple times my mum had to play 'monkey alpha' to square up and scare these macaques away from me, not their fault, i was carrying open bags of fruit even though my mum told me not to!

Anyway onto the main part, in Sumatra after seeing the Orangutans, we went to a little restaurant by the river for some food and while there met a nice Australian man called Doug, who was apparently a teacher. Super cool guy, we spent so long there he taught me entirely how to play Chess, the next day i even went back hoping to see him again to learn more. It so happens next to this restaurant was a man renting out big inflatable tires to go down the rapids on, being the good man he was Doug invited me to try it with him, so we did and got a tire each (he paid for mine). It was great, shifting body weight to shift between the dips and rises and rocks in the water, looking back this was clearly not a safe place to be using inflatable tires, i learned that lesson hard when shunted into a rock at 20 miles an hour lost the tire and went into the water. It was a powerful rapid and kept pulling me under the water, even at 8 i felt like i was going to die and even when i pulled myself up for a second i got pulled under again. At one point when i managed to get above the water for a second and i got my bearing and saw a giant rock to aim towards to get myself out. Somehow underwater i managed to keep record of where i was to this rock and made my way towards it, in fact i made the entire trip to it underwater. I grabbed on, i had finally made it.

Unfortunately as my head raised above the water a tire came above my head, then suddenly i saw a giant white mans ass in red swimming shorts coming down towards my face upon this tire. Turns out Doug spotted my misfortune, and thought the giant rock i spotted would be a good place to stop himself to to catch me in the rapids. His ass pushed me back underwater, thankfully he noticed the pressure of a childs face on his buttocks and immediately grabbed me out and saved me.